59 Fun Facts About Teddy Roosevelt

What did Roosevelt renounce after winning the 1904 election?

Another term: he counted the years served after his predecessor's murder as his first, came to regret the promise, kept it in 1908, then ran again in 1912.

Roosevelt became president at 42, the youngest ever, but who is the youngest ever elected?

John F. Kennedy was 43 when he won in 1960; Roosevelt was never elected at 42 but was sworn in after his predecessor was killed, which is why the two records have different holders.

Roosevelt became president after the assassination of which predecessor?

William McKinley died eight days after being shot in Buffalo, and the country's top Republican boss groaned that 'that damned cowboy' was now president.

Which chronic illness plagued Roosevelt as a sickly child?

Asthma: as a teenager he resolved to 'make his body' with weights and gymnastics, built a rugged physique, and ever after preached what he called the strenuous life.

Of which natural wonder did Roosevelt tell a crowd in 1903, 'You cannot improve on it'?

Grand Canyon: he begged Arizonans to keep it as it was, and when Congress fought his efforts to make it a national park he protected it himself as a national monument in 1908.

Which university did Roosevelt enter in 1876, graduating Phi Beta Kappa four years later?

Harvard: he arrived meaning to become a naturalist and published a pamphlet on Adirondack birds as a student, but he left set on law and politics instead.

Roosevelt's first book, a naval history published in 1882, was about which conflict?

The War of 1812: he began The Naval War of 1812 while still a student, and within a few years the US Navy itself had taken the book up as reading for its officers.

Roosevelt's first wife died on Valentine's Day 1884, hours after which relative?

His mother died of typhoid fever and, hours later in the same house, his wife of kidney failure two days after giving birth; he left the newborn with his sister and went west to grieve.

After a double family tragedy in 1884, Roosevelt went west to ranch cattle in which territory?

Dakota Territory: two years into ranching there he was a deputy sheriff, and with two ranch hands he chased down and captured three thieves who had stolen his boat.

In 1886 Roosevelt sailed abroad to marry his childhood friend Edith Carow in which European capital?

London: he had courted Edith in secret, and he sailed to England soon after losing the race for mayor, marrying her a month after the vote.

In 1895 Roosevelt took a job in New York City heading which body?

The Board of Police Commissioners made him its president, and at 2 a.m. he toured the beats with reporter Jacob Riis, finding one patrolman in ten at his post and one snoring on a butter tub.

Which post did Roosevelt resign in 1898 to go and fight in the Spanish-American War?

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1897 he had readied the fleet for war with Spain, cabling Commodore Dewey to prepare for action; in May 1898 he resigned to join the fighting in Cuba.

The Rough Riders were the nickname of which unit?

The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry was cavalry in name only by the time it fought: the troopers' horses were left behind in Tampa for lack of room on the ships, so the Rough Riders charged on foot.

Which army doctor, later the namesake of a Missouri fort, first led the Rough Riders with Roosevelt as his deputy?

Leonard Wood led the regiment through its first fight at Las Guasimas, then was moved up to run the brigade when a general fell ill with fever, which left Roosevelt in command for the famous charge.

Where in Cuba did Roosevelt ride his horse Little Texas in the Rough Riders' famous charge of 1 July 1898?

Kettle Hill, as the troops came to call it, was the first height taken: about forty yards from the top he hit a wire fence, jumped off Little Texas and ran the rest of the way on foot.

Roosevelt is the only president to have received which military decoration, awarded posthumously in 2001?

The Medal of Honor was a prize he coveted: he and his friends lobbied the War Department for it after Cuba and were turned down, so it reached his family 82 years after his death.

Returning from Cuba a war hero, Roosevelt was elected to which office in 1898?

Governor of New York, by a narrow margin: once in office he pushed through a tax on the franchises of gas, water and streetcar companies.

Which words complete Roosevelt's famous maxim "Speak softly and..."?

'...carry a big stick; you will go far' appears in a private letter of January 1900, where he rejoiced at forcing his party's bosses to drop a corrupt official and called the line a West African proverb.

What did Roosevelt call his domestic programme of fairness, trust-busting and pure food and drugs?

The Square Deal was his phrase for the 1902 coal strike settlement, reached after he threatened to have troops seize and run the mines; the label then stuck to his whole programme.

Roosevelt's first big antitrust case broke up Northern Securities, a monopoly in which industry?

Railroads: Northern Securities was a giant rail combination built by J. P. Morgan's syndicate, and the 1902 suit shocked a business world that expected him to leave it alone; the Supreme Court ordered it dissolved.

Which 1906 Upton Sinclair novel pushed Roosevelt to demand the Meat Inspection Act?

The Jungle was written to expose the misery of packing-house workers, but readers fixed on the filthy meat instead; Sinclair said he had aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit it in the stomach.

Roosevelt won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the end of which war?

The Russo-Japanese War ended in the 1905 treaty he brokered at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; the peace that won him the prize set off riots in Tokyo, where crowds felt cheated of the spoils of victory.

Why were the 1905 peace talks Roosevelt brokered held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, rather than Washington?

Its cooler summer climate spared the envoys a sweltering August in Washington, and the navy yard there offered security; Roosevelt himself never set foot in Portsmouth while the talks went on.

The Panama Canal route Roosevelt backed ran through territory that in 1903 belonged to which country?

Colombia: when its congress turned down his canal terms, Roosevelt sent warships to shield a Panamanian revolt, recognised the new republic within days, and had his canal zone by treaty before the year was out.

Where did Roosevelt go in November 1906 on the first official presidential trip abroad?

Panama and Puerto Rico: he went to inspect the canal being dug and took a turn at the controls of a large steam shovel, then called at Puerto Rico.

What name was given to the 16 battleships Roosevelt sent around the world?

The Great White Fleet took its name from hulls painted white, the navy's colour of peace, though the point of the voyage was to show every rival how far American battleships could now reach.

Which naturalist took President Roosevelt camping in Yosemite in 1903 and urged him to protect more wild land?

John Muir made his case by the campfire: Roosevelt took Yosemite Valley back under federal control in 1906 and left office having protected about 230 million acres of public land.

Which Wyoming landmark did Roosevelt make the first US national monument in September 1906?

Devils Tower came first because the Antiquities Act, signed that June, let him protect a landmark by proclamation alone; he went on to create 18 national monuments without waiting for Congress.

In 1903 Roosevelt created the first national wildlife refuge, Pelican Island, in which state?

Florida's Pelican Island is a tiny speck in a lagoon, and a bird society, not the government, paid its first warden; from it grew a refuge system that now reaches every state.

How was future First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt related to Theodore Roosevelt?

His niece: she was the daughter of his younger brother Elliott, and as president he gave the bride away in 1905 when she married her distant cousin Franklin.

Which Black leader did Roosevelt invite to a White House dinner in 1901, provoking Southern outrage?

Booker T. Washington came to talk over federal appointments in the South; the abuse the Southern press heaped on Roosevelt for the meal took him by surprise, but he never apologised for it.

Roosevelt hand-picked which Secretary of War to succeed him as president in 1908?

William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War since 1904, won the 1908 election with Roosevelt's backing; within four years they had fallen out so badly that Roosevelt ran against him.

After leaving office in 1909, Roosevelt spent a year collecting specimens on which continent?

Africa: the collecting was done with rifles, as he and his son Kermit spent a year hunting big game to fill American museums, and he kept some of the trophies for himself.

Roosevelt told a Paris audience in 1910 that the credit belongs to the man in the what?

In the arena: the line comes from 'Citizenship in a Republic', given at the Sorbonne, and Richard Nixon quoted the passage to the nation on the night he announced his resignation in 1974.

In October 1910 Roosevelt became the first US president to do what?

Fly in an aeroplane: he was 19 months out of office when he climbed into a Wright biplane beside pilot Arch Hoxsey at a St. Louis airfield, and no president flew while in office until 1943.

What was the popular name of the Progressive movement Roosevelt led into the 1912 election?

The Bull Moose Party was the nickname of the Progressive Party he founded after losing the Republican nomination in June 1912; the split in the Republican vote handed the election to Woodrow Wilson.

In which city was Roosevelt shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank while campaigning on 14 October 1912?

Milwaukee: Schrank fired outside the Gilpatrick Hotel as Roosevelt left for the Auditorium, and Roosevelt shouted to the crowd not to hurt him; Schrank claimed a murdered president's ghost had ordered the killing.

What slowed the bullet that hit Roosevelt in the chest on the campaign trail in 1912?

His speech and glasses case took the force, fifty folded pages deep. He coughed into his hand, saw no blood, judged his lung untouched and ordered the car on to the hall.

What became of the bullet that hit Roosevelt in 1912?

Left in for life: X-rays found it lodged in his chest, and his doctors judged it safer to leave there than to operate; he was back on the campaign trail within weeks.

Which reforming governor of California was Roosevelt's running mate on the 1912 Progressive ticket?

Hiram Johnson and Roosevelt carried six states and 88 electoral votes, beating the sitting Republican president, who won just eight, into third place.

In 1913-14 Roosevelt nearly died exploring a Brazilian waterway then known by what name?

The River of Doubt is now the Roosevelt River: feverish from an infected leg, he demanded to be left behind to die, and his son Kermit refused to go on without him.

Roosevelt's youngest son Quentin was killed in 1918 serving as what?

A fighter pilot, Quentin was shot down over France at 20; the father who had urged all four sons to the front never got over it and was dead himself within six months.

What was the name of Roosevelt's home near Oyster Bay, Long Island, where he died in 1919?

Sagamore Hill was nearly never built: he planned it as a home for his first wife, who died before building began, then went ahead for their baby daughter; as president he made it his Summer White House.

Roosevelt's last words were addressed to his servant James Amos and asked him to do what?

Put out the light: he asked it on going to bed and died in his sleep hours later; one commentator said death had to take him sleeping, or there would have been a fight.

On Mount Rushmore, Roosevelt's face is between Abraham Lincoln's and which other president's?

Thomas Jefferson is his other neighbour; the sculptor picked Roosevelt, the 'trust buster', to stand for the nation's development, beside its birth, growth and preservation.

Which injury did Roosevelt suffer while boxing as president, a fact hidden for years?

Blindness in his left eye followed a punch from a young artillery officer he was sparring with; he gave up boxing for jiu-jitsu and wrote that at least it was not the eye he aimed a rifle with.

Which of his children did Roosevelt say he could not possibly control while also being president?

Alice, his eldest, relished defying convention: the press crowned her 'Princess Alice', and a fashionable colour, Alice blue, was named after her.

Which actor played a wax Roosevelt that comes to life in Night at the Museum?

Robin Williams played him as a waxwork on horseback in a film set in New York's American Museum of Natural History, which Roosevelt's own father had helped to found.

After a run of player deaths, Roosevelt called college coaches to the White House in 1905 to reform which sport?

Football was killing players on the field, so he pressed the leading colleges to clean it up; the reforms that followed legalised the forward pass and produced the body that became the NCAA.

The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, claiming a US right to intervene in Latin America, was added to which older policy?

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 had only warned Europe to stay out; after European warships threatened debt-ridden Venezuela, Roosevelt added that the United States would step in itself as the region's enforcer.

In his 1910 Nobel lecture, Roosevelt proposed that the great powers form what?

A League of Peace, as he put it to the Nobel audience, should keep the peace among its members and stop anyone else breaking it, 'by force if necessary': a peace prize lecture with a threat in it.

Where did Roosevelt study law after giving up plans to study natural science?

Columbia Law School bored him, and he dropped out to go into politics without a degree; the school finally gave him one in 2008, almost ninety years after his death.

Which economist, running as a labor candidate, beat Roosevelt into third place in New York's 1886 mayoral race?

Henry George, author of the bestseller Progress and Poverty, finished second behind the Democrat; Roosevelt had accepted the Republican nomination with little hope of winning.

Which organisation did Roosevelt found to conserve large game animals and their habitats?

The Boone and Crockett Club came out of his Western trips, where he saw big game being wiped out; its hunter members drew up a 'fair chase' code and lobbied to protect Yellowstone.

To which federal body did President Harrison appoint the young reformer Roosevelt in 1889?

Civil Service Commission: he fought the spoils system there for six years, and when a Democrat, Grover Cleveland, took the presidency he kept the Republican on.

Why did party boss Thomas Platt push Roosevelt for vice president in 1900?

To sideline him: Roosevelt kept defying Platt's machine in New York, so the boss had him 'kicked upstairs' into a job seen as a political graveyard, and six months into it an assassin's bullet made him president.

Which phrase did Roosevelt use for the presidency as a platform for pressing his views on the country?

Bully pulpit: in his slang 'bully' meant splendid, not overbearing, so he was calling the White House a wonderful platform from which to preach to the whole nation.

Which label did Roosevelt pin on scandal-exposing journalists in a 1906 speech?

Muckraker came from Bunyan's man with the muck-rake, who could look no way but downward; meant as a rebuke, the word came to be a compliment for reporters who expose wrongdoing.

Which animal did Roosevelt's children take for a ride in the White House elevator?

A pony named Algonquin went up in the lift when their brother Archie was sick in bed: two of the boys took it to his room to cheer him up.